


Orange Sunset on Havarl

by greygerbil



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Battle Couple, Character Had A Plan; It Did Not Survive, Inappropriately timed emotional conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 10:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20947181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Jaal knows that Evfra keeps many secrets, but he would never have guessed this one, and Evfra would never have told if it wasn't for a particularly nasty cocktail of tranquilisers and painkillers.





	Orange Sunset on Havarl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asymptotical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/gifts).

“Faram, watch the flank!”

Just as Evfra’s call came through his comm device, Jaal ducked behind a boulder. A couple of feet behind him, a blast took a chunk out of the face of the rock. At his side sat Evfra, jamming more ammunition into his assault rifle while he kept an eye on the rest of the Resistance fighters. They huddled a good thirty feet apart from them behind a flat arm of the mountain. Jaal heard Evfra cursing under his breath.

“We need to make it to high ground. With your sniper rifle, you can pick them off, give Faram and the others some space. I’ll join you and distract the kett,” Evfra commanded over the sound of half a dozen blasters going off.

Jaal gave a firm nod to show that he had heard him. On Evfra’s sign, they crouched behind the jagged edges of a rough mountain path as they crawled upwards, dust exploding around them as their enemies kept firing. Evfra unloaded a whole clip into the chest of a kett who’d charged after them as Jaal hastened forward.

There was a rock jutting outwards with a fallen log on it that was tall enough for Jaal to hide behind. He trained the rifle on the kett that were pinning Faram and her squad down, took a breath to steady his hands and waited until his whole body had gone quiet before he pulled the trigger. One fell, then another and another.

Because of the fire from the squad, who now dared to poke their heads out, and Evfra, whose rifle wasn’t as accurate as his own at such a distance but still left holes in the ground, the kett could not fall back properly. Another twitch of his finger and another kett went down. Jaal trained his sights on a commander, waited one breathless moment to find the perfect angle, and smiled as he saw him collapse.

“Jaal!”

The call tore through his single-minded focus. Only then Jaal heard the whirr of a charging energy weapon, whining high behind him. He turned just as it reached his pitch, staring a kett right in the face for a split second; then, something barrelled into him from the side. The weapon fired and next to him, where he’d stood a moment before, Evfra was taken off his feet and flung into the log like a ragdoll. He made a stifled noise as his back slammed against the wood, the armour on his midsection torn to splinters, a seared wound blistering where the shot had hit him point blank.

Jaal tore up his rifle, took aim, and hit the kett in the head. It wasn’t between the eyes as he’d wanted, but it was enough and with the weapon charging again there hadn’t been much time to think. When the kett had fallen, he forced himself to look down to Faram and her people first of all, of whom he’d lost track now. Evfra would have been angry if he didn’t.

Faram had used the confusion of the attack from high ground to push forward. She had the remaining kett pinned down now, with the team spread out to cut off the only escape route that didn’t lead over a wide-open plain. It was an easy win.

With his heart in his throat, Jaal turned away and knelt by Evfra’s side. He hadn’t noticed that someone had made it up here with heavy machinery – or perhaps they had been lying in wait. Either way he should have kept an eye on his surroundings to support Evfra, but he’d been too taken with his task.

Blood was seeping into the ground now. Evfra laid motionless, breath shallow. As Jaal leaned forward to seal the wound with medigel, he frantically knocked against his comm device with his other hand.

“Faram, Evfra’s down! You need to finish up quickly, I don’t know how long he can make it. We have to bring him back to base.”

“What?!”

The shock in her voice mirrored his own.

-

Jaal had grown up on Havarl and half his family had been in the resistance even before Evfra had taken over and made it the formidable force it was today. As their small glider slipped through the jungle, he directed Faram down the subtle paths he’d learned of all those years ago that made the return a matter of minutes, even as the sun already sank behind the trees, the sky aflame with red, orange, and purple.

As Jaal held Evfra’s limp form in place so he wouldn’t tumble off the backseat, Evfra’s head lolling in his lap, the others tried to wring the story of what had happened out of him, and Jaal could feel their looks boring into him when he said that Evfra had taken a blow for him. It was a brave thing for a fighter to do, but the leader of the resistance should not have risked his life for a single soldier. Evfra was the heart and head of their group, only rivalled by the Moshae in his importance to the angaran people. There was no thinking what would happen if he died and Evfra knew well how frail and young the structures he’d built were as of now. He never avoided combat, and Jaal had a feeling that he wanted to stand in the front more often than he allowed himself, but he only led important raids now and he’d been in this firefight because they had been ambushed. Why had he taken such a risk for Jaal? Perhaps it had been an instinct...

There was just one physician in the small Resistance base who looked slightly ill when she realised what her task was going to be as Jaal and Faram carried Evfra inside. Jaal played nurse, handing her antiseptic and pliers to remove the splinters from Evfra’s flesh and holding his arm so she could put a cannula in and flood him with painkillers and tranquiliser before she bound his broken ribs.

A half hour later, Evfra was stable, stretched out on an ion bed that would help stabilise his bioelectricity while he recuperated. Jaal had sent a quick message to Ryder that he would be back later than expected. _Something went wrong._

The doctor offered him a drink before she went to tend to the less critical injuries of the rest of the team, asking Jaal if he would be fine with monitoring Evfra for a bit.

“I don’t think I would have left if you’d asked me,” Jaal answered.

She smiled at him before she let the door slide shut and Jaal sat slowly on a chair, feeling guilt and worry coil in his stomach in equal amounts.

Evfra stirred after about an hour. His eyes were unfocused as he looked up at the ceiling, but the frown on his face told Jaal he was struggling for true consciousness, concentration. He finally turned his head to stare at Jaal, looking him up and down once.

“Faram?” he asked hoarsely.

“Her team made it out. No casualties.”

Evfra gave a slow nod. He glanced blearily down a his naked upper body. It was already covered in scars, but Jaal knew a new one would appear under the bandages.

“We took you back to base,” Jaal explained, hand growing tight around the edge of Evfra’s bed. “The wound is not that deep, but you broke five ribs, so you will need some rest.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Evfra murmured. With a huff, he let his eyes drift close. “Guess I was lucky. Amateur mistake... need to pay more attention.”

“It was my fault. I should have been looking over my shoulder.” Jaal hesitated. “You should have let me take that shot.”

“No,” Evfra said rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

“But you are our leader. If you had died-”

“It’s what you do on the field. ‘s right. But anyway – you were the one who went with the Pathfinder... convinced me to allow you,” Evfra slurred. “You’re important to this cause, too.”

For a moment, Jaal did not know what to say. It was not that Evfra had never praised him before, even just on the matter of his judgement of the outsiders, but the idea that Evfra considered him to have such high value to the resistance was very new. He’d always stood in the shadow of his family there.

“Still, we cannot do without you, Evfra,” he said softly.

“I cannot do without you.”

Evfra lifted his hand. The back of it brushed Jaal’s cheek aimlessly, causing a quiet crackle of bioelectricity from his damaged field, before his arm dropped back on the bed like a lifeless thing. He blinked, apparently trying to keep his eyes open, but then succumbed to the exhaustion once more as Jaal sat in stunned silence next to him.

-

It took a good couple of hours more for Evfra to wake again, and another handful to seem like himself, as Jaal heard him asking for his uni-device from the other room and giving a slew of orders, voice still rough but no less firm than usual. Jaal, who was huddled with a few resistance soldiers in a room adjacent to the small med bay, waited for him to finish his conversations before he pressed the button on the sliding door.

One look from Evfra, an apprehensive frown, told Jaal that he very well remembered their brief moment together. He stepped away from the door to let it shut again.

“How are you?”

Evfra sat up in the bed against a few pillows, but his face was pale, the lightest blue hue almost white.

“Better. I asked your Pathfinder if he would drop me off at Aya, as you told me you were headed there, anyway.”

“So you plan to travel today?”

Jaal wanted to protest, but could see in Evfra’s expression that the only reward for criticising that choice would have been a sharp remark.

“Yes, but we must talk before that.” Evfra lowered the arm to which his uni-device was strapped. “Or rather, I must apologise.”

“You didn’t do anything that would require it,” Jaal said, meaning it. He could never have been offended by an unguarded and entirely innocent show of affection, even if it had come from someone he liked less than Evfra. “I just want to ask if you meant it.”

The implications had turned in his head since Evfra had drifted off again. A gesture so gentle paired with these words was very difficult to misread. Evfra was a hard man, lonely and closed-off for an angara, but it was impossible not to admire him and Jaal had done so for years. The thought that he could slide into the role of his lover was as intriguing as it was flattering, as few had the ability to draw even as much as a smile from Evfra.

“I should say it was only the drugs talking, but I doubt you would believe me and it wouldn’t be true,” Evfra answered matter-of-factly. “However, I had no plans to speak of this to you and still don’t.”

“Why not?” Jaal asked. Most angarans would have been unable to hide such strong feelings, if nothing else. Evfra had somehow managed to treat him no different than any other soldier. It was rather remarkable.

“Even if you would be interested in being with me, which I will not presume, I am not the sort of person you should be with,” Evfra answered. “I have too much baggage and too much work to pay you enough attention. Our temperaments are different and I know what people say about mine… I am what I have to be, but that doesn’t make me likeable. That was never my goal.”

For a moment, Jaal thought on the words before he smiled at Evfra. Who knew that someone who decided with such cold courage over the lives of thousands of angara could still find himself lacking it here? How fascinating the things you learned about people were! It only made him favour Evfra more to know that he struggled at times, too.

“I appreciate your concern, but it’s my decision who I want to be with,” he said calmly.

Evfra looked at him for a long moment before he gave a quiet snort. “That year with the Pathfinder has made you more confident,” he murmured, but although it was obviously meant to sound sarcastic, Jaal noticed the trace of appreciation in his voice.

“Yes,” Jaal said. “It was a good decision to step away from where my family had already treaded and make my own way. It has taught me where my strengths are. I think it may have made speaking to you easier also. You are much like these aliens, you know?”

“Excuse me?” Evfra said flatly.

Jaal chuckled at the barely-hidden disdain. “Very few are as free with their feelings as angara, though I know they experience them just as intensely. It’s not considered appropriate in their communities to just show it to the world at all times. I think you also think that it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to feel like the rest of us because you have decided to carry the burden of the resistance, but that’s not true. You’re still just a person, too.”

For a moment, Evfra flicked his gaze away and Jaal was quite sure that he had hit a nerve. “Well, if you were not smart, I would probably not have gotten into this situation,” Evfra muttered. “Now what? You know what I think, and you are right that it is your decision.”

“I think when we are back on the Tempest, we should find a moment to ourselves and get some drinks in the kitchen. I would suggest the bar on Aya, but I think we would have too many eyes on us to talk in private,” Jaal said, calling on all the confidence he’d proclaimed to have. “We have a couple of – eccentric crew members, so we even have alcohol... though that probably doesn’t mix with your medications.”

“Water will do,” Evfra said and there was a hint of a smile on his face.


End file.
